Identity crisis: Multiple measures and the identification of schools under ESSA

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) makes sweeping changes to the way school performance is measured. Using the innovative measurement system developed by the CORE Districts in California, the authors explore how schools can be identified for support and improvement using a multiple measures framework. They show that 1) Different academic indicators measure very different aspects of school performance, suggesting that states should be allowed and encouraged to make full use of multiple measures to identify schools in the way they see fit instead of reporting a summative rating; 2) The ESSA regulations effectively restrict the weighting of the non-academic “School Quality and Student Success” indicators to zero, which is not in the spirit of the expanded measurement; and 3) The majority of schools will be identified for targeted support under the current regulations, suggesting the need for a clarification in federal policy.